Democratic state Rep. Brandon Dillon represents the 75th House District, which includes part of the city of Grand Rapids. He is in his third and final term in the House. Growing up, I always considered myself "pro-life." As someone who was raised in Grand Rapids, went to Catholic school for 13 years, and has been blessed with beautiful (and active!) twin 12-year-old boys of my own, it was just part of who I was and the community I came from. That's why, as an elected official at both the county and state level, I previously sought the endorsement of Right...

The GOP establishment can’t make Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel go away. On Friday, McDaniel will be announcing—he told Breitbart News exclusively—a new Political Action Committee (PAC) designed to help conservatives across Mississippi, and the nation, get elected to political office, replacing GOP establishment politicians. The PAC, titled the United Conservatives Fund will focus on “electing conservatives and holding Republicans accountable while messaging conservatism in a way that secures conservatives get a chance to be elected even over some of those in the establishment,” McDaniel tells Breitbart.

“You cannot impose your will, you can’t impose your values, you can’t impose your standards, your institutions on other societies and other countries. It has never worked; it never will work, as noble as you believe [the effort] is,” he is quoted as saying. This conclusion is partially based on his experience as an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War, as he explains: “The violence, the horrors, the suffering that I saw [in Vietnam] conditioned me … I saw the suffering of our own troops; I saw the suffering of the Vietnamese people; I saw terrible things, which war always...

After the Washington Post reported that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke at a 2002 event hosted by a white nationalist group, RedState editor Erick Erickson knocked Scalise's supposed ignorance about the organization. According to the Post's Robert Costa, Scalise appeared at an event for the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, but didn't know at the time that the organization was a hate group. Erickson was not willing to give Scalise the benefit of the doubt. "How do you not know? How do you not investigate?" Erickson wrote...

Crominbus was the last straw. Conservatives are now absolutely livid at the RINO Establishment. Rarely, if ever, has such an unmistakable voter mandate been so brazenly nullified before the newly elected could even take office. Calls escalate to "end" the Republican Party because conservatives cannot change it. By contrast, Rush Limbaugh, while lamenting that "the losers in the last election [got] pretty much everything they want[ed]," nevertheless rejects the third party call: "taking over the Republican Party is better." Sarah Palin protests that what House Speaker John Boehner and 162 Republican "yahoos" did "stinks to high heaven," for which Rep....

Noah already wrote a policy rebuttal to Paul’s position, which Paul elaborated on this afternoon in a new op-ed at Time. (The op-ed, unlike his tweets, doesn’t mention Rubio by name. Although it does approvingly cite … George W. Bush?) Anyone want to make the case that the politics of attacking Rubio on this issue were smart, at least? I can’t figure out why Rand would do it. When I tweeted out my surprise a few hours ago, a dozen people tweeted back, “Maybe Paul’s just saying what he really believes.” No doubt. But the thing that distinguishes Rand from...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., -- In an exclusive interview with FTMDaily's (http://ftmdaily.com/) Jerry Robinson, former Congressman Ron Paul discusses some of his core values as an American and as a human being. "On Faith and Family: A Conversation With Dr. Ron Paul" provides compelling insight on the problems facing the nation today, as well as reflections on Paul's three presidential campaigns. Paul explained that war and strong-arm diplomacy, both part of America's compulsion to police the world, are fundamentally unsound policies. Most disturbingly, he said, is that a vocal minority of the Christian Evangelical community is strongly in favor of such foreign...

Sen. Chuck Hagel, who accompanied Sen. Barack Obama on his trip to South Asia and Iraq last week, criticized the McCain campaign for its latest television ad attacking the Democratic candidate. The ad blasts Obama for not visiting wounded troops during his visit to Germany. Obama has said he chose not to cancel a visit to a military hospital there after consultations with the Pentagon, due to concerns that such a visit might be seen as using wounded troops for political purposes. The McCain ad, which contains footage of Obama bouncing a basketball before U.S. military personnel in Kuwait, implied...

Abstract The Kings of Rome were abolished because of the last King's immorality and tyranny. The replacing government, a Republic, balanced the powers and responsibilities between the people and the upper class. The surrounding tribes recognized the Romans' generosity: some surrendered to Rome because they would be better treated by the Romans than their existing government. As the state grew, the Romans became self-absorbed, and created enemies instead of allies. The upper class used entitlements to absorb the people's responsibilities and gained political superiority by manipulating the law and people’s elected representatives. Slave labor destroyed the peoples' need to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) The Huffington Post ran an Associated Press story attacking Sen. Rand Paul under the headline, “Rand Paul Contradicts Experts, Says Ebola Is ‘Incredibly’ Contagious.” The story starts: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told a group of college students Wednesday the deadly virus Ebola can spread from a person who has the disease to someone standing three feet away and said the White House should be honest about that. His comments directly conflict with statements from world health authorities who have dealt with Ebola outbreaks since 1976. (Emphasis added.) This, unfortunately for HuffPo and the AP, is not true....

Sen. Rand Paul today took to the Senate floor to offer a unanimous consent request to separate the Syria rebel funding language from the Continuing Resolution. Senate Democrats objected to this request. Sen. Paul then delivered a foreign policy address outlining his opposition to arming the Syrian rebels. A video and copy of Sen. Paul's remarks as prepared for delivery can be found below. SEN. PAUL DELIVERS FOREIGN POLICY ADDRESS REMARKS: If there is one theme that connects the dots in the Middle East, it is that chaos breeds terrorism. What much of the foreign policy elite fails to grasp...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is not thrilled with the way the NFL has handled the suspension of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, and said today on a radio show that he intends on boycotting the NFL and will be sending NFL Commissioner Roger Gooddell a letter criticizing the relatively light punishment Rice received for beating his fiancé unconscious. "They care so little about our women and our children that they’re going to hire these barbarians who go and hit their wives and their kids and they’re gonna get a slap on the hand? And some guy got a year...

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process. In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe. "The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a...

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the law enforcement that swarmed around Boston in the days following the marathon bombings was scarier than the actual terrorist attack. “The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” he said on the Lew Rockwell website, Politico reported. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” The terror attacks on April 15 in Boston killed three and injured 264. Mr. Paul, a former libertarian political candidate who served in Congress as...

A retired United States Army colonel expects as many as 30 million like-minded individuals will descend on Washington, DC this week and demand that President Barack Obama and other members of his administration be booted from office. Those are just some of the demands that Col. Harry Riley, founder of “Operation American Spring,” said he’ll ask the Obama administration to adhere to when militia members and patriots of all sorts arrive in the nation’s capital on Friday and begin demonstrating against a government the group considers to be in violation of the principles established by the founders of the country....

I only caught a little of Beck today. Generally agree with Beck, but this time I thought he was way off base. He had a retired guy from the special forces on, and in my opinion Glenn was talking over him and trying to bait the guy, but the guy held firm. In short, I got that Beck thought it was a mistake to have killed the snake because of the ramifications. If this is not the stance of a coward who is to afraid to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may, then I...

Paul, according to CNN, also talked about making the Republican party “bigger” and much more inclusive, saying that unless Republicans “broaden their message” to reach more people, winning future elections is going to be a bit of a problem. “You go to a Republican event and it’s all white people—not because we’re excluding anybody, but because we just haven’t done a good enough job encouraging people to come into our party.”

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

It's time for a public hearing about what's going on with our stock market. I've said Michael Lewis' claim that the stock market is "rigged" is a gross exaggeration, but we can thank him for one thing: the megaphone he has with "60 Minutes" has helped revive a sleepy debate on what is right—and wrong—with our market structure. And now, it is time to strike while the iron is hot: It's time for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to convene a series of public hearings on the stock market. Read More Michael Lewis, 'Flash Boys,' and '60 Minutes' Bring...

March 29, 2014 4:00 AM Which Side Are You On? If you don’t care whether Republicans win, care that Democrats lose. By Kevin D. Williamson For conservatives, the story of the Obama years has been the depressing spectacle of Republicans fighting a rearguard action covering their retreat from a Democratic agenda backed by superior numbers. Republicans began the Obama administration with effectively no leverage: Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair, and Harry Reid running the Senate. The outcome of that was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the worst domestic defeat for the...

Senator Rand Paul is being criticized and condemned by the Washington establishment. That’s almost certainly a sign that he’s doing the right thing. And given the recent events in Russia and Ukraine, we should say he’s doing a great thing. This is because Senator Paul is waging a lonely battle to stop the unthinking and risky move to a world where governments – including corrupt and evil regimes – collect and share our private financial information. I’ve written about this topic many times and warned about the risks of letting unsavory governments have access to personal information, but the Obama...

Two things happened over the weekend in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. 1. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul led the field in a national poll conducted by CNN/ORC International. 2. Paul won the straw poll at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference. 3. Those two events come just a week after Paul cruised to another 2016 straw poll victory at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Add those things up and it's quite clear that Paul is the candidate of the moment on the Republican side. There's no one -- not even Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush -- who has...

Opening a door to hedge his political bets, Sen. Rand Paul has asked the leader of the Kentucky Senate for legislation to ensure that Mr. Paul can run both for the White House and for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2016, The Washington Times has learned. “Yes, I am working on clarifying an ambiguous state law that Rand Paul believes is unconstitutional if it is interpreted to bar running for re-election to the Senate and for president at the same time,” Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer told The Times on Monday. “The purpose of the bill will be...

Business leaders are plotting to take down Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) as part of a broader effort to punish lawmakers over the government shutdown. In a letter obtained by The Hill, prominent Michigan donors request financial backing for Amash’s primary challenger, Brian Ellis. Seven individuals, including prominent Michigan businessmen Mark Bissell, J.C. Huizenga and Mike Jandernoa, signed the fundraising plea. They argue that Amash “and others have effectively nullified the Republican majority in the U.S. House.” “[Amash] and a small group of like-minded legislators rejected Speaker Boehner’s plea to pass legislation requiring Congress and the president be subject to ObamaCare,...

Time to cancel your subscriptions, Guns and Ammo Editor Dick Metcalf has penned an editorial for their December issue that will be leaving fans in shock; he’s supporting gun control. Metcalf claims there is a large difference between regulation, (well-regulated militia) and a direct infringement of civil rights, he has made this distinction the premise of his claims. “I bring this up,” he wrote, “because way too many gun owners still believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement. The fact is that all Constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need...

In a secret meeting on Tuesday morning, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) hosted a bipartisan group of senators and House members in the Capitol’s basement. According to several participants, the lawmakers plotted ways to stop the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Since the diplomatic situation is fluid, there was no final consensus on how best to combat the administration, but potential legislative maneuvers, press appearances, and letters were discussed. Several undecided members asked questions. Aides say Paul planned the gathering over a week ago, and the list of attendees grew by the day. He is pleased, especially, by...

Crime And Trivia I haven't written about the Laci Peterson murder case or the rape case involving Kobe Bryant for two reasons. One, the only things that should be legitimately reported about any criminal trial are the testimony of the witnesses under oath and the remarks of the judge and the attorneys inside the courtroom during the trial. Everything else is hearsay and gossip. Two, an ordinary crime and subsequent criminal trial do not affect anyone except the victim, the perpetrator and their families. Therefore, it should be of no interest to anyone else. Unless you are family or friend,...

Sen. Rand Paul renews fight over indefinite detention of US citizens The Hill Nov. 25, 2012 Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is bringing a new — and more aggressive — approach to a longstanding debate over the Defense authorization bill, threatening to filibuster the bill to get a vote on his amendment limiting indefinite detention. Paul’s amendment takes a new tack to curb the military’s ability to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism by affirming they have the right to a speedy trial by jury under the Sixth Amendment. His push to change the indefinite detention laws for U.S. citizens...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews made a bold prediction on Wednesday's Hardball. "The hard-right is going to take over the Republican Party in 2016 and the nomination is going to Rand Paul" (video follows with transcript and commentary):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this. Iâ€™ve been offering a prediction of late. Let me nail it down now. I believe the Republican Party is going to go hard-right in 2016. Itâ€™s going to run someone from the growing hard-right wing of the Party, something it hasn't done since 1980. And here's the thinking which works equally...

Money line: “This is what I do for a living.” Didn’t he predict a Bush/Clinton race in 2016 just nine months ago? If he believes what he says here about the parties swinging like “pendulums” from moderate nominees to ideologues and then back again, why would he have named Jeb as a strong contender last November? In fact, the roots of the counterargument are in Matthews’s own shpiel here: Most of the time, they head to the center. This is what Republicans did most successfully in 1952 – when, after twenty years of Roosevelt and Harry Truman – they wanted...

Remember when your older brothers and sisters used to prank you by warning about the monster under your bed? In a similar way, Washington’s war hawks are gearing up to scare you with another phantom devil: isolationism. If you feel like you’ve already been hearing increasing warnings about isolationism, you’re right. Pundits, journalists, and now a whole new think-tank initiative are warning about this dangerous ideology.

As a Conservative, I hold these truths to be self evident: (in no particular order) * Life begins at the moment of conception. Abortion, for any reason, real or imagined, is murder. * The Right to Bear Arms is an unalienable right that the government cannot infringe on in any way. Background checks, "assault weapon" bans, magazine capacity rules, and the like are completely unconstitutional. *Global warming is as much of a fraud as the "Next Ice Age" scare was in the 1970's. *Illegal aliens are criminals and should be treated as such. There should be no amnesty for illegal...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie conflated statistics when he claimed Sen. Rand PaulÂ’s Â“pork-barrel spendingÂ” is the reason Kentucky receives more federal funds than New Jersey for every tax dollar it sends to Washington. The figures cited by Christie are affected very little by pork-barrel spending.Moreover, Senate Republicans have imposed a voluntary ban on earmarks â€” otherwise known as pork-barrel spending â€” since the Kentucky senator took office in 2011. So Paul hasnâ€™t brought any of the traditional pork-barrel spending to Kentucky.Paul also added some confusion to the issue when he seemed to suggest that Kentuckyâ€™s ratio was the...

Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, who announced this week that he will challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, attacked alcohol vendors, called for mandatory financial disclosures of campaign donations, favored banning cigarettes, and attacked libertarianism while he was a Harvard student. In a twice-weekly column for the Harvard Crimson, Cotton — who has been called a “Republican’s dream” by National Review and an “extraordinary figure” by the Weekly Standard — criticized politicians for not doing enough to oppose tobacco and wrote a laudatory 1996 piece praising Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 1997, Cotton wrote a scolding op-ed on alcohol and underage drinking...

The libertarian advocacy group that grew out of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign slammed Sen. Marco Rubio Wednesday after the Florida Republican voted against a bill to freeze aid to Egypt that had been introduced by Paul’s son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. The younger Paul’s bill, which would have halted $1.5 billion in annual aid given to Egypt, failed Wednesday by a lopsided of 86-13 vote. The Ron Paul-inspired group, Campaign for Liberty, released a statement to its national press list after the vote, singling out Rubio and calling his decision “disgraceful.” “Senator Rubio today stood with President Obama and...

Unfortunately, the fall of Rome is a pattern repeated by empires throughout history ... including ours? A group of libertarians gathered in Las Vegas recently for an event called "FreedomFest." We debated whether America will soon fall, as Rome did. Historian Carl Richard said that today's America resembles Rome. The Roman Republic had a constitution, but Roman leaders often ignored it. "Marius was elected consul six years in a row, even though under the constitution (he) was term-limited to one year." Sounds like New York City's Mayor Bloomberg. "We have presidents of both parties legislating by executive order, saying I'm...

DES MOINES, Iowa — Some Republicans are accusing the party’s neoconservative hawks of playing dirty pool in an attempt to smear Sen. Rand Paul as a bigot for having an aide who once expressed admiration for Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. The aide, Jack Hunter, who quit on Monday, was eased out by Mr. Paul after a neoconservative publication revealed that, as a radio “shock jock” some years ago, Mr. Hunter advocated that the Southern states secede once again from the union. Saying he had become more libertarian and broad-minded since his days as the “Southern Avenger,” Mr. Hunter revealed...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will use every resource he has at his disposal to stop President Barack Obama from bailing out newly-bankrupt Detroit because he believes the city can and must save itself and learn from its fiscal mistakes. "I basically say he [Obama] is bailing them out over my dead body because we don’t have any money in Washington.” “There’s some good things that come out of bankruptcy,” Paul said in a phone interview from Iowa. “One is you get to start over. Bankruptcy lets you be forgiven of your debt. And you do so by getting...

en. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room on Tuesday evening where he was asked to respond to former Vice President Dick Cheney who told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace that the junior Kentucky senator was wrong when he criticized the NSA’s surveillance programs. Paul tore into the Bush administration’s role in the establishment of the post-9/11 security regime, noting that he thinks it is possible to catch terrorists using methods consistent with the Constitution. Cheney told the Fox News Sunday host that Paul was incorrect in his criticisms of the NSA’s communications monitoring programs. The former vice...

People aren’t bailing out of the Republican Party to go over to the dark side. They are leaving because thanks to the ongoing infestation of the party by liberal statists, they don’t see a fundamental difference between the GOP and the Democrats. The Lesser Evil argument that has persuaded some of us to vote for the likes of John McCain is no longer cutting it: A new study by the Frontier Lab, a conservative market research group, found that Republican voters who leave the party do so because they are tired of being told to vote Republican as the “lesser...

FRANKFORT — Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Dan Logsdon called on U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday to condemn U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's hiring of a staffer with a history of making controversial comments about race. Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online publication, reported Tuesday that Paul staffer Jack Hunter is a former talk-radio host who called himself the "Southern Avenger" and is a former member of the League of the South, a group that advocates Southern secession. "Senator McConnell likes Republicans to call him leader, and he has made himself heard on every issue he deems of consequence, real...

My wife, three children and I are all US citizens. Returning to the United States yesterday via Miami International Airport, my wife and I were asked what we do for a living. The border agent checked his screen after we answered. He asked my girls after consulting his computer monitor, "Which one of you is the singer? And which one of you is the dancer?" in light of the NSA database stories, perhaps I'm being paranoid. But I felt like they had this information and we're verifying it. He entered notes on his screen as we answered. My girls are...

Libertarianism goes mainstream By: James Hohmann April 7, 2013 06:50 AM EDT Stereotyped for decades as pro-pot, pro-porn and pro-pacifism, libertarians are becoming mainstream. Fair or not, Ron Paul epitomized to a swath of voters the caricature of a goofy grandpa who invests in gold, stockpiles guns, sees black helicopters whirling overhead and quotes Friedrich Hayek. His ride into the sunset — combined with an evolving electorates’s move away from hot-button social issues — gives a new libertarian guard the opportunity to rebrand their governing philosophy as more reasonable, serious and compatible with the Republican Party. Led by Sen. Rand...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has urged New York State to adopt his ban on large sugary drinks. The city has jurisdiction over restaurants, movie theaters, fast food restaurants and street carts, but not supermarkets or convenience stores that do not serve prepared foods. “The state should do exactly the same thing in stores,” Bloomberg told reporters including WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb. …

The truth is, the Tea Party anger that boiled over in response to the President Obama’s healthcare plan had been brewing for years due to conservative disappointment with George W. Bush’s policies. Bush created record-breaking deficits, embraced Congressional earmarks, gained passage of an enormous expansion of Medicare entitlements without funding it, nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and backed McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform. Principled conservatives like Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity spoke out against the direction of the party, to their credit. Conservatives must be careful not to abandon their principles out of blind hated for President Obama....

<p>WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that Republicans controlling the chamber are willing to compromise on legislation increasing the government's borrowing authority.</p>
<p>"Frankly, I think it would be irresponsible on behalf of the Congress and the president not to be looking at back-up strategies for how to solve this problem," Boehner said. "At the end of the day, we have a responsibility to act."</p>